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Crawley MP launches Heart Disease Report in Parliament

Crawley MP and Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Heart & Circulatory Diseases, Henry Smith, has launched the APPG’s new report highlighting the potential impact of artificial intelligence technologies for patients.

On Wednesday 1st May the APPG published the ‘Putting Patients at the Heart of Artificial Intelligence’ report which represents the conclusions of an inquiry which included roundtable discussions with patients, policy makers, cardiologists, researchers and industry representatives, as well as a literature review and a public survey.

This was conducted by the APPG, which is supported by the British Heart Foundation. The Secretary of State for Health & Social Care, Rt Hon Matt Hancock MP, also took the time to speak at the launch of the report.

Henry said;

“While we’re seeing real progress in the way heart and circulatory diseases are detected, treated and managed, there are around 7 million people living with these conditions in the UK, with a quarter of all deaths caused by these diseases.

“It’s vital that we prevent and detect heart and circulatory diseases earlier. A key part of achieving this goal is to actively engage patients and the wider public as these technologies are driven and developed.

“AI has the potential to offer significant opportunities for the NHS to address the challenges of heart and circulatory diseases on a larger and faster scale than ever before.

“The NHS has an important role to play to help make sure patients have access to, and understanding of, information about the potential of this technology.”

AI is strong at finding patterns and trends in data that are not obvious through human analysis. One such technique, machine learning, involves designing a set of instructions to be used by computers to detect patterns in sets of data, such as heart scans. Trends can be spotted which would not have been noticed otherwise.

The APPG’s survey showed that 91 per cent of people with heart and circulatory diseases believe that the public should be well-informed about the use of AI in the healthcare sector.

Additionally, 90 per cent of respondents believed that it is the responsibility of the NHS to inform the public about current and potential uses of AI in healthcare.